You’re a bad bot. I’m tired of playing with you. I’m going to make you dead now.

July, 2014. The internet is a secluded village, all controlled and terrorized by one boy…

Meet Anthony, from the ‘It’s a Good Life’ episode of The Twilight Zone (Nov. 1961). Details over at imdb, or watch the whole episode (with modernized commercial/ad inserts) at hulu.

We’ve hired Anthony, now in his 50s to do away with spam, Zombie DNS DDoS Bots, and other such pests buzzing around and annoying or destroying everything and everyone in the internet play ground. We should have thought of it earlier… Just making bad things dead or wishing them into the cornfield.

OK, not quite that easy, here’s what’s up in the fight against Spam-Nados and Zombie Bots…

We have had to turn back on/up as many of the filters and blocks as possible because the “spam load” on some of the users (including the admin) is overwhelming.

Some of your contacts may get ‘rejections’ or ‘bounces’ if their servers are identified as “blacklisted” (DNSBL). If you have any reports from your friends about problems email support@computermedic.org and we’ll get them whitelisted.

It is not catastrophic, but there is an increase in the junk mail getting through.

Q: Why?A: Because gmail, yahoo and aol have managed to get their servers listed in Uniform Resource Identifier Blacklist (URIBL) databases. **

The Q/A above leads to the P/S below (as distasteful as it may be).

Problem: gmail (google), yahoo and aol [and others] are URIBL blocked by the spam filters/servers, we all want email from our friends at gmail, yahoo and (yes, still) aol.Solution: turn off URIBL blocking at the spam filters/servers. (Throw IN the bad bathwater with the good?)

Someday, maybe, the internet will be a better more friendly place to live. Until then, a few more *Junk* emails every day.

** gmail, yahoo and aol do not provide ‘easy platforms’ for spammers, phishers and junk/bulk email proliferators; they get listed on these ‘block lists’ by their competitors, odd-balls that hate big companies and goofy, immature people that have nothing better to do.